Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Election Day in Canada : The Rise of Voter Suppression

The Script&Film Company's EDayFilm "Election Day In Canada: The Rise Of Voter Suppression" is travelling across Canada visiting communities where live and robocalls were made to record the stories of the electors Elections Canada has abandoned.

It kicks off at 6:30pm tomorrow Wednesday May 20 at the main branch of Public Library in Guelph with a presentation and a fundraiser. Free admission. More deets here for an event on the 21st in Waterloo and then back again to Guelph on the 23rd - Guelph where an estimated 7,760 robocall attempts were made.

Because isn't it time we had some answers about what happened with the robo and live calls in 237 ridings right across Canada in the 41st federal election before we deal with more of the same again in the upcoming 42nd election this fall?

In November of 2012, nine months after the robocall story really broke open nation-wide, Elections Canada commissioned and published a survey which reported that 85% of electors polled said the 41st election "was fairly run". Subsequent missives from EC show they never wavered far from this comforting conclusion, despite the commissioner's own final report on the termination of any further investigation stating that 27% of the complainants they investigated received fraudulent calls.

6 comments:

.. the various trailers are simply outstanding. I hope people see this film, as they will realize immediately how Canadians were defrauded in our last general election and that our 'government' pretended it didn't happen.. and, well, so what does that tell us ? ?

An injunction against the ridiculously named "Fair Elections Act" is probably not on; however, its constitutionality will likely be tested in court ---only after the election, which is just fine with the Cons if it gets them elected first.

This kind of system-gaming, along with a growing number of illegal acts committed by public offices, but not prosecuted in court, has been the hallmark of neo-right governments, more prevalent now that the pendulum of political ideology is swinging the other way and these economic charlatans scramble to retain power they never deserved.

One symptom of their perfidiousness is resort to statistics where they don't, by definition, belong---at Elections Canada. The example above is but one, the most egregious, in contrast, being the awarding of Etobicoke riding to the Conservative based on a statistical sampling of votes instead of a re-count. I don't believe this ever happened before; people should be concerned that any riding could be won without an actual ballot count. But, then again, they're probably already busy worrying about all the other crimes their elected officials are getting away with.

We note the perverse irony that the Cons assiduously restrict public info, muzzle scientists, critically compromise StatsCan, and illegally destroy gun-registry data--- but then parsimoniously allow Elections Canada to provide meaningless stats all dressed up as important public info. To be clear, this public authority does not---or should not--- deal in stats: properly, its sole purpose is to register and count votes---and counting is not statistical sampling. Perhaps our habit of poring over and comparing pre-election polling predictions and actual electoral results confuses the two. The former is purely statistical sampling of a small percentage of citizens (whether they are eligible to vote, or if they even bother to vote, or not) , the latter a count (which includes 100% of all unspoiled ballots).

Wasn't it the restriction as a matter of expediency? I remember sixth estate did a breakdown of the court's decision and even in the polls the court handled, there were a surprisingly large amount of "handled" polls that weren't explained or seemingly touched on by the court's reasoning.

I get that they don't necessarily have to explain all of their reasoning behind the decisions they make, but when it's a matter of the reliability of our electoral system the SC's performance was subpar.

It had the appearance of being a rush job rather than the perception that it was a careful examination of the facts.

Yeah, the whole sad affair was a bit of a pissing match between the government which uses tax dollars to pay for court time, and the plaintiff who happened to be the Liberal contender for the Etobicoke seat: he might have appealed, but after spending some $350-grand of his own money pursuing the issue (---he obviously felt he'd win both the recount and the seat), he was tapped out and couldn't see the Crown's raises.